“Mr. Riah and Miss Wren at The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters” by Harry Furniss — the fifteenth illustration for “Our Mutual Friend” (1910)

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Mr. Riah and Miss Wren at The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters

Harry Furniss

1910

13.5 cm x 9.3 cm, or 5 ¼ by 3 ⅝ inches, vignetted

The Charles Dickens Library Edition, Vol. XV, Book 3, “A Long Lane,” Chapter II, “A Respected Friend in a New Aspect,” facing 448.

“Stop a bit,” interposed Miss Wren. “I’ll give the lady my card.” She produced it from her pocket, after struggling with the gigantic door-key which had got upon the top of it and kept it down. Miss Abbey, with manifest tokens of astonishment, read the diminutive document. — Our Mutual Friend, p. 454.

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Passage Illustrated: Introducing Abbey Potterson and Jenny Wren

When they had plodded on for some time nigh the river, Riah asked the way to a certain tavern called the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. Following the directions he received, they arrived, after two or three puzzled stoppages for consideration, and some uncertain looking about them, at the door of Miss Abbey Potterson’s dominions. A peep through the glass portion of the door revealed to them the glories of the bar, and Miss Abbey herself seated in state on her snug throne, reading the newspaper. To whom, with deference, they presented themselves.

Taking her eyes off her newspaper, and pausing with a suspended expression of countenance, as if she must finish the paragraph in hand before undertaking any other business whatever, Miss Abbey demanded, with some slight asperity: ‘Now then, what’s for you?’

‘Could we see Miss Potterson?’ asked the old man, uncovering his head.

‘You not only could, but you can and you do,’ replied the hostess.

‘Might we speak with you, madam?’

By this time Miss Abbey’s eyes had possessed themselves of the small figure of Miss Jenny Wren. For the closer observation of which, Miss Abbey laid aside her newspaper, rose, and looked over the half-door of the bar. The crutch-stick seemed to entreat for its owner leave to come in and rest by the fire; so, Miss Abbey opened the half-door, and said, as though replying to the crutch-stick:

‘Yes, come in and rest by the fire.’

‘My name is Riah,’ said the old man, with courteous action, ‘and my avocation is in London city. This, my young companion —’

‘Stop a bit,’ interposed Miss Wren. ‘I’ll give the lady my card.’ She produced it from her pocket with an air, after struggling with the gigantic door-key which had got upon the top of it and kept it down. Miss Abbey, with manifest tokens of astonishment, took the diminutive document, and found it to run concisely thus: —

‘Lud!’ exclaimed Miss Potterson, staring. And dropped the card. [Book Three, “A Long Lane,” Chapter II, “A Respected Friend in a New Aspect,” pp. 454-455]

Commentary: Furniss’s Introduction of Miss Abbey Potterson and her Public House

Again, our reading of the plate is proleptic in that we encounter it some seven pages before the textual moment realised. It serves to introduce the proprietor of The Jolly Fellowship Porters, whose stern, no-nonsense veneer conceals her kind-heartedness. Here, businesswoman Miss Abbey Potterson, enthroned and rigid, holds up Jenny Wren’s business-card, which, if we may judge by her gesture, Jenny has just handed her. The public house’s parlour, crammed with barrels and spigots, forms the backdrop. Thus, the picture does not belong in the first chapter of the third book at all, though it is positioned towards the end of “Lodgers in Queer Street,” which begins with Jenny’s visiting Pubsey & Co. at 9:00 P. M., just as Riah is closing the office.

The picture reinforces the relationship between Abbey and Lizzie Hexam, whom Riah and Jenny have secreted outside London to protect her from Bradley Headstone's advances. It also establishes the downriver setting for the discovery of Rogue Riderhood’s (apparently lifeless) body. Just before one of Miss Abbey’s customers announces the discovery of a corpse washed up from a collision between a foreign steamer and a wherry in the dense fog, Jenny and Riah have handed Miss Abbey an affidavit signed by Riderhood in which he exonerates Gaffer Hexam of any blame in the supposed murder of John Harmon. As the chapter closes, two local men carry in the body of the lighterman upon a stretcher. The watermen seen outside the open window (right) are Furniss’s way of preparing us for the ‘found drowned’ narrative about to unfold in the accompanying letterpress.

The sympathetic treatment of the earnest, engaged, and obviously Jewish head employee of the somewhat shady financial house of Pubsey & Co., the ‘fairy-godmother’ of cripple Jenny Wren, reinforces Dickens’s original intention for Riah’s character. To address the very real charge of anti-Semitism that his portrait of Fagin as a ‘Jew’ had aroused three decades earlier and that continued to dog him, Dickens created a good-hearted, well-motivated, kindly supporting character who is obviously Jewish, from his accent to his traditional garb. Furniss’s flattering portrait here reflects Marcus Stone’s appreciation of Riah as Jenny’s unlikely companion in Miss Wren fixes her idea (October, 1865: Instalment 18): "‘the benevolent old Jew [. . .] was meant to wipe out a reproach against his Jew in Oliver Twist as bringing dislike upon the religion of the race he belonged to’ (p. 371, Forster’s biography, cited in Ison, p. 31).

Relevant Illustrations in the Original (Serial), Diamond, and Household Editions

Left: Marcus Stone's serial plate for the June 1864 number: At the Bar. Centre: Mahoney's 1875 Household Edition illustration for the same chapter: Jenny twisted her venerable friend aside to a brilliantly-lighted toy-shop window, and said: "Now look at 'em. All my work!" ("A Respected Friend in a New Aspect," p. 187). Right: Sol Eytinge, Jr.'s study of the proprietor of the river pub: The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters (1867). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Related Materials

Illustrations by Marcus Stone (40 plates from the Chapman and Hall edition of May 1864 through November 1865)
Frontispieces by Octavius Carr Darley (4 photogravures from the Hurd and Houghton Household Edition of 1872)
Illustrations by Sol Eytinge, Jr. (16 plates from the Ticknor and Fields' Diamond Edition of 1867)
James Mahoney (58 plates from the Chapman and Hall Household Edition of 1875)
Harry Furniss (28 lithographs from the Charles Dickens Library Edition, Vol. XV, 1910)
Clayton J. Clarke (two studies from his designs for the Player's Cigarette Cards, 1910)

Bibliography

Bentley, Nicolas, Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1988.

The Characters of Charles Dickens Pourtrayed in a Series of Original Water Colour Sketches by “Kyd.” London, Paris, and New York: Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1898[?].

Cordery, Gareth, and Joseph S. Meisel, eds. The Humours of Parliament: Harry Furniss's View of Late-Victorian Culture. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2014. [Review by Françoise Baillet]

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Marcus Stone [40 composite wood-block engravings]. The Authentic Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. 21 vols. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1901 [based on the original nineteen-month serial and the two-volume edition of 1865]. Vol. XIV.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Frontispieces by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and Sir John Gilbert. The Household Edition. 55 vols. New York: Sheldon & Co., 1872. 4 vols.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. VIII.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by James Mahoney. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1875. Volume IX.

Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. 18 vols. London: Educational Book, 1910. Vol. XV.

Hammerton, J. A. "Chapter 21: The Other Novels." The Dickens Picture-Book. The Charles Dickens Library Edition. Illustrated by Harry Furniss. 18 vols. London: Educational Book Co., 1910. Vol. XVII. 441-442.

Ison, Liz. "'All looks were fixed upon one man': 'Fagin' or 'The Jew'? Assessing Dickens's 1867 Textual Revisions of Oliver Twist." The Dickensian No. 525, Vol. 121, Part 1 (Spring 2025): 28-42.

Kitton, Frederic G. Dickens and His Illustrators. London: George Redway, 1899. Rpt. Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 2004.

Vann, J. Don. "Our Mutual Friend, twenty parts in nineteen monthly instalments, May 1864—November 1865." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: The Modern Language Association, 1985. 74.

Created 11 August 2025